Live and Let Diet (Australian Amateur Sleuth Book 1) Read online

  Live and Let Diet

  (Australian Amateur Sleuth, Book 1)

  Copyright © 2016 by Morgana Best

  All Rights Reserved

  License Notes.

  This ebook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This ebook may not be resold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each person you share it with. If you are reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then you should purchase your own copy from your favorite ebook retailer. Thank you for respecting the author’s hard work.

  * * *

  This is a work of fiction. Any resemblance to any person, living or dead, is purely coincidental. The personal names have been invented by the author, and any likeness to the name of any person, living or dead, is purely coincidental.

  This book might contain references to specific commercial products, process or service by trade name, trademark, manufacturer, or otherwise, specific brand-name products and/or trade names of products, which are trademarks or registered trademarks and/or trade names, and these are property of their respective owners. Morgana Best or her associates have no association with any specific commercial products, process, or service by trade name, trademark, manufacturer, or otherwise, specific brand-name products and / or trade names of products.

  By this act

  And words of rhyme

  Trouble not

  These books of mine

  With these words I now thee render

  Candle burn and bad return

  3 times stronger to its sender.

  (Ancient Celtic)

  Table of Contents

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Connect With Morgana

  Next Book in this Series

  Other books by Morgana Best

  About Morgana Best

  Note from the Author

  Chapter 1

  I stopped at the ancient stone fence and took a deep breath, running my fingers over the feathery yellow moss that ran like cobwebs across the mottled surface.

  The dry country landscape that stretched before me was nothing like the bustling city of Sydney. For a start, there was no traffic noise, just the clanging of an ancient windmill and the racket of several kookaburras arguing over their prey. I hoped their prey was a simple mouse and not a venomous snake. And while the air here was definitely cleaner than the city air, the curious cows staring at me over the fence had a pungent aroma all of their own. I swatted at a huge blowfly that had left them to buzz around my head. I wondered if I would be able to adjust to life in the country.

  Still, I’d had no option but to leave Sydney. The divorce was fresh and painful, yet every day I got just a little bit happier. I wasn’t sure why I had been so upset about dumping a man who had cheated on me, but I figured it had something to do with the fact that we had been married five years. Old habits die hard. At least the ache was now a dull thud and not a searing pain.

  I was also on a tight budget, as my property settlement had not yet come through. My ex-husband’s family was extremely wealthy, and he was doing everything he could to stop me getting as much as a cent. That is, with one exception. He had offered to pay for six months’ rent and had even suggested the cottage in Little Tatterford to me. Apparently one of his colleagues had recommended it to him. I knew this would have been on the advice of his expensive lawyers, not out of any sense of kindness on his part.

  I had filled my van with my belongings, such as they were, and had driven to the Australian country town of Little Tatterford, which, if what I had read online was correct, had a population of fewer than four thousand people—rather a change from the five million of Sydney.

  I smiled as I thought of my new home, which would only be a short distance away from where I stood, hidden behind a stand of eucalyptus trees.

  My home was to be a one bedroom, cozy cottage. That was a good deal smaller than my previous home, and it didn’t have my ex-husband in it, but that was a plus. This style of house is known as a Victorian miner’s cottage, and they are generally quite pretty with lots of character. I had been told that mine had an open fireplace in the living room, and was situated on the corner of a large tract of land owned by a woman named Cressida Upthorpe. One other building sat on the land, only a stone’s throw from my new cottage, a large, two story residence that Cressida Upthorpe operated as a boarding house.

  It was afternoon, the sun hanging in the sky just over the mountains on the horizon, throwing thin shadows across the ground. I turned to my new van, and admired the words I had airbrushed onto it, Sibyl’s Mobile Pet Grooming. I knew the name wasn’t at all clever or original in the least, but customers would be left in no doubt as to the nature of my business. The van was white, the writing in purple, and near the door were a cartoon cat and a cartoon puppy in a basin full of suds.

  I made my way to the van, threw the door open, and took a look inside at everything that I owned. I sighed, trying to forget the fact that I was divorced at twenty-seven, and had moved to the country just to get away from my ex-husband. I was farther from my mother, and didn’t even know how far away my sister, Phyto, was, as she was teaching in the city of Al Ain in the United Arab Emirates.

  The air was cool and crisp, quite a difference from the humid coastal air I was used to, where jackets were more for looks than they were for function. The few leaves left on the trees were red and orange and yellow. This was a new start, I reminded myself. A life of peace and quiet.

  I was looking forward to moving everything into the cottage, despite the fact I knew it would be countless hours getting everything unpacked and putting it where I wanted. I had thought my belongings were few, but moving house always revealed just how many possessions one actually had.

  I needed groceries too, but there was no time for that now. After the weekend, I planned to drive my van downtown and park on the main street that ran through the center of Little Tatterford, so I could start building a customer base. I had been encouraged when I had driven through the main street earlier, as I counted no fewer than twelve people out and about, walking their dogs.

  But first I wanted to walk down the gravel path toward the residence, and say hello to Cressida Upthorpe, since I hadn’t even met the woman yet. I needed to get my keys. I’d had a number of lively discussions with Cressida through email, and had spoken to her on the phone. I wanted to know if my mental idea of Cressida’s appearance would match up with what she looked like in reality. I pictured her as short and plump, with white hair pulled back severely, kindly yet quite eccentric.

  The sun was starting to fall further in the sky and the cold wind had picked up with a vengeance. Halfway to the boarding house, I found myself wishing I had thought to bring a far thicker coat. I’d been warned about the weather up here in the mountains, but I wasn’t prepared for the bite in the air. I picked up the pace, walking with my hands in my pockets, and my eyes on the trees above. Here and there a leaf detached from a brown stem, and fluttered slowly to the ground. It was the end of autumn
, and fast heading into winter.

  There was the boarding house, sitting in the fields like something out of an old movie. I shuddered and pulled a face. “It’s more like the scary house, Manderley, from the old gothic film Rebecca, rather than one of the lovely mansions from Pride and Prejudice,” I muttered aloud to myself.

  I hesitated by the pomegranate tree. Who knew these grew in the mountains and bore fruit at this time of year? I reached out my hand instinctively for one of the glossy red fruits, and then snatched it back. If I ate the fruit, would I, like Persephone, be trapped here forever, she in Hades, and me in Little Tatterford? A strange feeling washed over me.

  I shook my head and continued down the path. I was being fanciful. I’d always had an affinity with Greek mythology, and sometimes that made my imagination run away on its own course.

  The boarding house was imposing. Made of wood with grand masonry insets, it had delicate white iron lattice work on all the balconies. That was where the good ended. It also looked gloomy, and had an uncared-for air about it. I would not have been the least bit surprised if it had been used as a haunted house on a movie set.

  There was a small gravel drive coming from a larger road that ran perpendicular to the one on which I walked, and there were a few cars parked along it.

  I climbed the creaky wooden steps to the front porch. I was about to knock on the front door, when it was pulled open with some speed from the other side. I found myself staring at a woman—this had to be the boarding house’s owner, Cressida Upthorpe. She was short, for I had gotten that much right, but she was stick thin and had bright red hair cut in a short bob that had probably been stylish in the sixties. She wore enormous red-framed glasses and had makeup caked impressively onto her face, ‘impressively’ in this case meaning it was impressive that the weight of all the makeup didn’t force her head to fall off her shoulders.

  And that was when she thrust a large crocodile skin handbag at me and said, “Take this! There’s been a murder.”

  Chapter 2

  The woman then ran down the pathway to a car. The engine roared to life and I watched her speeding down the drive. Her tires spun, throwing up a plume of smoke.

  For a moment I stood there, dumbstruck, not knowing what to do. To my relief, a tall, portly man appeared in the foyer beyond the front door.

  “Hi, I’m Sibyl Potts,” I said. “Was that Cressida Upthorpe who just ran past me?”

  The man nodded solemnly. “Hello, Ms. Potts, or may I call you Sibyl?”

  I nodded. “Sure.”

  “Welcome to Little Tatterford. Allow me to introduce myself. I am Mr. Buttons, one of the permanent residents here.” His accent was clipped and of a posh Oxbridge English. He looked to be in his fifties or sixties, his hair pitch black except for the gray at the temples. His nose was long and curved, and his shoulders sharp and sloping. He wore a dress shirt and black dress pants, and his shoes were so shiny that I could almost see my reflection in them.

  I was more than a little confused. “Excuse me, but Cressida Upthorpe just said there was a murder?”

  Mr. Buttons adjusted his glasses. “Yesterday I drew The Tower, Judgment, and the Ten of Swords. I suspected something like this would happen. Whether it is murder or not, I cannot say, but there is indeed a body in the storage room.”

  My jaw fell open and I wondered why the man would mention tarot cards at such a time as this. “A dead body? Here? But why did Ms. Upthorpe run away?”

  “The police. A local police officer lives but three minutes from here.” Mr. Buttons went back inside the house, and I followed him.

  I kept pace with him as he walked across the foyer, heading for a door off to the side marked ‘No Entry’ in writing that was scrawled on an angle.

  Mr. Buttons flung open the door and I walked inside. At the end of the room, near another door, was a pair of legs, bare and hairy, laying on the floor. I couldn’t see to whom they belonged, but I was reasonably sure it was the dead man.

  As I walked past an imposing table, I set down Cressida’s large handbag, and prepared myself. I had never seen a dead body before, and I didn’t know what to expect. I took a deep breath just before stepping around the table.

  Here was the body, although it looked as if the man could be sleeping. His eyes were closed, and he was dressed in blue boxer shorts and a white undershirt with no sleeves. He had no socks, and I could see that the nails on his toes and his hands were yellowing and brittle.

  “Here he is,” Mr. Buttons said needlessly, using a hand to indicate the general space of the body.

  “Yes,” I said, feeling the need to respond to Mr. Buttons’ remark. I moved around the body, careful not to disturb anything, but when I looked up, I saw that Mr. Buttons was adjusting some silverware on the table.

  “Should you be touching that?” I asked.

  The British man looked at me and lifted a thin black brow. “It’s such a mess in here.”

  I narrowed my eyes. “It might be a crime scene. On CSI, you know, the TV show, they say people mustn’t touch crime scenes.”

  Mr. Buttons appeared puzzled. “A crime scene—are you certain? There’s no knife jutting from his back, and no sign of a struggle.” He scratched his chin. “I know Cressida told you there was a murder, but she has an undeniable flair for the dramatic. I’m sure it’s simply a natural death. Mr. Higgins was only around fifty years of age, but he’d been quite unwell for some time.”

  I shook my head. “Really, that’s up to the police to decide.”

  “Well, I won’t tidy up the body then, I suppose,” Mr. Buttons said with disappointment in his voice and a shrug of his sloping shoulders, but then he lifted a silver candle holder that had fallen and placed it the right way up.

  “Why didn’t Ms. Upthorpe just call the police?” I asked.

  “Blake Wessley, who lives just around the corner, is the police here,” the man said. “There’s just him and one constable.”

  “Really?” I asked, surprised. Little Tatterford was a small town, but surely not small enough that it should only have two cops.

  As I watched, a fat tabby and white cat came slinking out of the shadowy corner toward me and meowed. I bent and let the cat sniff my hand before sliding my finger up to his head, where I scratched him softly.

  “Lord Farringdon,” Mr. Buttons said with fondness. “I do love that cat.”

  “He seems nice,” I said lamely, and Mr. Buttons didn’t reply. “Who was the man?” I pointed at the corpse.

  “Tim Higgins, a fellow boarder,” the Englishman said. “He was a pleasant enough gentleman, and he kept to himself, but I think he had a little too much admiration for Cressida.”

  I raised my brows. “Cressida, I mean, Ms. Upthorpe?” I wasn’t sure how I should be referring to her.

  Mr. Buttons appeared not to hear me. “He was worried about his heart, so he was on a diet.”

  I glanced quickly at the body again. The man was not fat, but he was not fit, as he had a belly, a line of which peeked out from under the bottom of his undershirt. He was completely bald, although he had a mustache, all white and bushy above his lips.

  I frowned. “There’s no blood or anything,” I said. “Like you said, there’s no sign of a struggle, but the silverware was knocked over.”

  “He might have flung out his hand as he fell, perhaps from a heart attack,” Mr. Buttons said. “He hadn’t been well lately. He’d been acting erratically too, dizzy and confused. Maybe he wasn’t eating enough since he was on a diet, or maybe he had early onset dementia? There was a lot of walking around like this, in his underwear, even though it was well past morning. He often didn’t show up at meal time.”

  I frowned. “Dizzy and confused, you say?” I took another look at the dead man. His face was indeed beet red. It all added up.

  I kneeled down and bent over the man, smelling near his mouth. It smelled of bitter almonds.

  “Cyanide,” I pronounced.

  Chapter 3

  �
��Cyanide?” a man’s voice repeated.

  I looked up as Cressida Upthorpe swept into the dining room, followed by a man who could not have been older than thirty, and was as good looking as men came. His hair was brown and kept short, his eyes a piercing blue. He had a dimple in his right cheek that was present even with his serious, police officer face. He wore a tee shirt and jeans, and he clearly hadn’t been on duty. I couldn’t help but notice that he didn’t appear to have a gun. If I had seen him anywhere else, I never would have guessed he was a cop.

  I had no time to study the man further, as he addressed us sharply. “Away from the body, you two!”

  Mr. Buttons took my arm, and the two of us moved against the wall to stand in front of a huge, gilt framed painting.

  The cop crouched down and looked at the body. “What can you tell me about him, Mr. Buttons?”

  I noticed he hadn’t asked Ms. Upthorpe, and I was sure that had been intentional.

  “He’s been unwell lately, dizzy, confused, that kind of thing.”

  The cop nodded. “I’ll call a doctor.”

  “A doctor? But he’s dead!” I was unable to help my outburst.

  The man turned to me. “A doctor will examine the body and decide if he died of natural causes.”

  I shook my head and took a step forward. “But I smelled cyanide by his mouth.”

  The cop narrowed his eyes at me. “So you said.” He bent down and inhaled. “I can’t smell a thing.”

  I resisted the urge to roll my eyes. “It’s a genetic thing. Only a small percentage of people have the ability to smell the bitter almond scent of cyanide.”

  The cop looked me up and down as if he were examining a particularly strange sort of insect. “And you know this because? Cyanide is hardly freely available; you can’t just walk into a store and buy it.” His tone was full of disbelief, and bordering on the derogatory.

  “My ex-husband is a chemical engineer,” I said, doing my best to keep my tone even. “He works for one of the mining companies, manufacturing sodium cyanide.”